


He Was Right

by Catzzy



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Hurt Tony Stark, Post Infinity War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 12:43:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16367945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catzzy/pseuds/Catzzy
Summary: Tony visits May when he finally comes back, because he knows she's waiting for someone who won't be coming home any time soon.(My take on the apparently leaked trailer description)





	He Was Right

He finds himself staring at the wooden door, eyes glassy and breathing uneven, all because he knows that the one person he won’t find once the door opens, if it opens, won’t be _him_.

Then he knocks, scrunching up his fists in a mixture of anger and anxiety. He doesn’t know what he’ll say if that door opens, and can’t make sense of why he’s even here in the first place. 

_No,_ he tells himself, he _should_ be here, because she needs to know. And it’s up to him to do that, because it was his fault—

The door opens, and May is there, her phone in her hand and her eyes red-rimmed, dried tears down her cheeks and her hair puffy and messy.

“Tony,” she’s surprised, he can tell, and quickly puts the phone to her ear again, “no, he was on the bus, I don’t—“

“May,” Tony interrupts, and then she glances at him, and maybe it’s the way he looks at her, broken and tired, that she just _gets_ it, and hangs up the call.

May tries. She does, she tries not to assume the worst before the man can even speak, but he’s looking at her with _that_ face, the one she thought she’d never see again. And she thinks that every time. She thought that after the police came after Richard and Mary left, and she thought it again when she saw Peter the night Ben didn’t come home, and she’s seeing it again, when Peter hasn’t come home.

“He’s gone,” she whispers, and her voice is hoarse from talking and shouting in the phone for the whole day, “he’s gone, isn’t he? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?

Tony doesn’t answer straight away, but his eyes are fighting a battle trying to keep tears from falling.

He can’t even look at her, because while May is processing possibly the worst news of her life, all he can think of is that it is his fault, and that he took Peter from her. 

She shakes him by the shoulder, and he looks at her unexpectedly.

“Where is he?” She asks, because assumptions and feelings aside, he still hasn’t said anything. She’s having a conversation by herself.

He shakes his head slightly, “I…sorry, May,” he manages to say, and knows what a bad job he’s doing, least of all because he knows a sorry won’t bring him back, or do anything for her at this point.

“How did you know?” 

He hesitates, because he knows how she felt about him going off ‘crime-fighting’. But he owes it to her, he owes it to Peter.

“He got off the bus,” he tells her, “he jumped on the spaceship and he came with me.” It sounds like something out of a story, and it sounds next to impossible. 

“That _ring_? He was on there?” She's confused, and teary, but mostly confused. 

“I told him to get off, made sure he did but he—he ended up on there anyway, because—“ he shrugged and huffed a humourless laugh, “—it’s Peter. He does what he wants and he never listens,” his voice cracks, and he’s starting to get a little manic, but the anger isn’t directed at Peter. It never is. 

May’s lip trembles, “he was with you?”

Tony’s hands start to shake, and he balls them up into fists again, “I was with him the whole time,” he tells her, “he was in my arms,” he clenches his jaw so hard that he's sure something clicks. 

“He died.” That’s all she manages to say, then she breaks down, because suddenly, she can’t breathe anymore. _Everything_ is gone. In less than fifteen years, she's lost everything that every mattered to her, and Peter mattered. He mattered the most, and he was the one that wasn't supposed to leave her. He was the one that was supposed to stay until she was old and grey, and she didn't know how she could live with all this nothingness.

Tony holds onto her, and she sobs into his chest, mumbling incoherently and saying his name over and over, and he can’t bring himself to tell her anything else — can’t bring himself to tell her how scared Peter was, or how heartbreaking it was watching him fight, with everything he had, to live. Even more so when he lied to the boy, because _nothing_ was okay, Peter certainly wasn't, because he wasn't here anymore. 

He doesn’t tell her how he saw his whole life collapse and disperse into dust along with Peter, because Peter was _good_ , and now he was gone. And the never-ending feeling of despair that he'd been right all those years and that Peter showed him he had been was _eating_ away at him.

He certainly can't tell her that it's his fault, because it _is_ his fault. Maybe if Peter was somewhere else--hell, he doesn't know how any of this works. Doesn't know how one snap of the finger decided who would live and who wouldn't - doesn't know whether location was even a factor, but it could've been. Because no one knows, it could've been, and that would mean it was partly Tony's fault that Peter wasn't alive and breathing right now. 

“May,” he says quietly, determined - she pulls away to look at him with those broken, tired eyes, null of hope, “I’ll bring him back."

She glares for another few seconds like he's talking gibberish, and then shakes her head, “Tony,” her voice shakes, and she can only find the ability to speak because she needs to tell him how insane he sounds, and how unhealthy and heartbreaking his next mission will be if— _when_ it fails, “Tony, that’s— _how_ , how can you—“

“Fury was right. He was right since day one,” Tony says, more or less to himself, “And I’ll do whatever it takes so that never happens again.”

May nods, unsure of what to say, because this is all Tony, and she isn’t even sure whether he’s still to her, "right about what, Tony?"

**Author's Note:**

> ashfkdjhfa I had to after someone told me about the "leaked trailer" but sounds pretty legit and sadd


End file.
